Spoken Scots In The Media

Scottish Affairs, no.21, autumn 1997

SPOKEN SCOTS IN THE MEDIA
microphone Cormack
Despite the recent upsurge in write most the Scottish media (e.g. Dick 1990; MacInnes 1992 and 1993; Meech and Kilborn 1992; Smith 1994) little comment has been do on the use of spoken economical, beyond a hardly a(prenominal) brief mentions. Language is central to the media and also to questions of nationality and collective identity, and is wherefore an issue of some importance. Given, however, that there is still debate as to whether or not Scots should be allowed the status of a language, perhaps this neglect is not so surprising. Scots is here interpreted to mean those forms of language spoken in Scotland which derive in the end from Anglo-Saxon but more recently from the Middle Scots of the 15th and 16th centuries, and which have traditionally included unhomogeneous dialectical forms, such as Southern, West central, East Central and Northern variants, but now also include dissimilar urban forms such as contemporary Glaswegian. The justification for linking these under one term is that they have share features which distinguish them from incline regional dialects, as well as a different, shared history from the English dialects owing to the political unity of Scotland in the first place 1707.



If Scots is seen simply as a dialect (or a collection of dialects) of English, then there may seem to be less reason to treat it as a kind of nationality or to concern ourselves with its appearances in the media. But even if considered as a dialect it has a richness which A.J.Aitken has noted when writing that in quantity, distinction and variety this literature [in Scots] far outshines the dialect literatures of either other part of the English-speaking world (Aitken 1984b, p.528). Elsewhere he describes Scotland as a dialect island within the English-speaking world (Aitken 1984a, p.111). The difference between a dialect and a language is at least part a political difference, not just a lingual one. As Max Weinrich put...If you want to get a rich essay, order it on our website: Orderessay



If you want to get a full essay, wisit our page: write my essay .